Danish – lcelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, along with his solar energy social business Little Sun, is launching a €50,000 crowdfunding initiative on Kickstarter – the first German Kickstarter campaign by one of the major players of the contemporary artworld!!!
Olafur Eliasson’s critically acclaimed artworks have appeared in and been collected by major museums around the world since 1997. In 2003 he installed The weatherproject in Tate Modern, London, which was seen by more than two million people. Projects in public space include The New York City Waterfalls, commissioned by Public Art Fund in 2008 with the support of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Eliasson also created the crystalline facades for Harpa, the Revkjavik Concert Hall and Conference Centre, which won the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award 2013.
The artist is the recipient of the 2014 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT, one of the most generous cultural honours in the US.
The purpose of the campaign is to crowdfund the second in Little Sun’s line of solar energy products: a mobile phone charger (with built-in lamp) called Little Sun Charge. Little Sun is a social business and global project founded by the artist and the engineer Frederik Ottesen to get clean, reliable, affordable light to the 1.1 billion people in the world living in off-grid areas without electricity. The project’s first product, the Little Sun solar LED lamp, is sold all over the world. Purchasing Little Suns in areas of the world with electricity makes the lamps available in off-grid areas at reduced, locally affordable prices, where they provide a clean alternative to toxic and expensive fuel-based lighting such as kerosene lanterns. Since 2012, over 300,000 Little Sun lamps have brought clean, sustainable energy to the world, including 147,000 lamps to the 1.1 billion people on the planet living without reliable access to the electrical grid. The lamps have also been sold in on-grid areas (for camping and festivals, for example), and have been especially well-loved by kids all over the world. In keeping with this, Little Sun works with schools to introduce children to solar energy and sustainability. Sales of the lamps in on-grid areas help keep the price low for off-grid users.
Little Sun Charge combines a unique stylishness with cutting-edge solar technology. The components of the Charge are perfectly calibrated using high-efficiency Sun Power solar cells, features a handy LED light and optional stand, and will fully power a smart phone after only five hours in the sun (most other solar chargers currently take between eight and 20 hours). It is a stylish, smart and socially responsible way to charge your mobile phone without relying on the grid – no matter where in the world you are!!!
Proceeds also support solar entrepreneurship in Africa, and will tangibly change the lives of those living off-grid, who rely on their phones for their livelihoods and as their only means staying connected with the wider world. Little Sun’s philosophy of compassionate global togetherness and energy access for all resonates perfectly with the crowdfunding spirit of Kickstarter. And of course the fact that the Charge is based on cutting-edge technology, gives credence to launching it via a digital and social platform.
Little Sun has always worked by the belief that we are stronger together!!!
Eliasson on Little Sun Charge: “It charges your phone with solar power – it makes you powerful, and it connects you to others. Once connected, we can create a movement.”
The Charge follows on from Little Sun Original, the iconic yellow solar lamp shaped like a sunflower, launched at the Tate Modern in 2012: Eliasson’s “work of art that works in life.”
Check all details on the campaign out here > www.littlesun.com/kickstarter
